DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE 
UNITED STATES 



REPORT PREPARED FOR 

THE COMMISSION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

TO THE BRAZIL CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION 




For Distribution at the Brazil Centennial Exposition 
1922-1923 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT FEINTING OFHCB 

1922 



DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE 
UNITED STATES 



V 



Supplementing Exhibit 

of the 

UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE 

at the 

BRAZIL CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION 

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 

1922-1923 



V 



By 

HERBERT A. SMITH 

United Slates Forest Service 



1^2 



/\5 



LlifURY OF COHQi^ESS 

-»«Ct»VtP 

JAN 2^19^-1 t 



1 



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FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 

The present forest area of the United States is estimated at 463,000,000 
acres, or something more than 723,000 square miles. ^ This is a Httle 
more than one-half the original forest area of the country. The stand of 
timber is estimated roughly at 746 billion cubic feet, of which 485 billion 
cubic feet is saw timber and 261 billion cubic feet cordwood. Almost 
three-fourths of the saw timber is in the remaining virgin forests. 

These remaining virgin forests are chiefly found in two widely separated 
regions, the South and far West, from which the United States is now 
drawing the bulk of its lumber cut. Together, they have 85 per cent of 
the total area still occupied by virgin growth, and 95 per cent of the re- 
maining stand of virgin timber. The area of virgin growth in the far 
West is twice that in the South, with a stand in the ratio of 3 >^ to i. But 
the lumber cut of the South, as compared witli that of the far West, is in 
the ratio of 7 to 6. 

In the three hundred years that have passed since settlement began, 
the virgin forests of the United States have been the primary dependence 
of its inhabitants for their supplies of lumber. Only forty years ago in- 
telligent men were wont to speak of the country's forest resources as in- 
exhaustible. But it is now entirely clear that the needs of the nation re- 
quire immediate and general provision for growing timber, as agricul- 
tural crops are grown. The lumber industry has been supported and is 
still mainly supported by the diminishing and retreating old-growth for- 
ests, now reduced to one-sixth their original size. A few years more will 
leave little but second growth in the pine forests of the South ; and there- 
after the requirements of the country for softwood lumber must be met 
from the western forests, involving heavy transportation costs, and from 
what has grown up on the cut-over lands in the older regions. These 
lands were first lumbered without provision for continuous production 
and then neglected. Left to take care of themselves as wild lands, and 
exposed to progressive devastation from recurrent forest fires, they have 
nevertheless gro\\Ti a certain amount of timber, but for the most part of 
inferior quality. 

In consequence the United States is entering on a period of timber 
shortage which is already being felt in the East, and which is bound 

' Knowledge of the forest resources of the United States is still incomplete in many particulars. For lack 
of fully satisfactory data, it is necessary to present statistics which are often approximations merely. Since 
in the nature of the case exact figures are not always possible, round numbers will be used throughout in 
this report. Ease of comparison as well as consistency of treatment w ill thus be gained. Readers desiring 
greater detail are referred to the Report of the Forest Service entitled "Timber Depletion, Lumber Prices, 
Lumber Exports, and Concentration of Timber Ownership," in which is incorporated the latest and fullest 
information available concerning the areas, stands, rates of growth, and current depletion of the forests in 
the various parts of the United States. 

11287—22 3 



4 FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 

to become more acute during the next half century. Forest man- 
agement under which all timber lands not of sufficient value for agricul- 
tural use to warrant clearing shall be handled with a view to full employ- 
ment of their capacity to grow wood continuously, has become of urgent 
public importance. While it can not wholly avert a timber shortage, it 
can both lessen its severity and limit its duration. The purpose of this 
report is to set forth what progress is being made toward a wiser handling 
of the country's forest resources — one of its greatest potential assets, and 
its sole dependence for meeting most of its requirements for wood, without 
large quantities of which its industrial life can not be maintained. 

ORIGINAL FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The land area of the continental United States (exclusive of Alaska) 
is something under 3,000,000 square miles. Approximately two-fifths 
of this area was originally forest-covered. The treeless prairie and plains 
region, which extends in a broad strip north and south from Canada to 
Mexico, in the west-central part of the country, separated these forests 
into two grand divisions. The eastern division was continuous and con- 
tained over I million square miles. The western division was broken and 
confined by dry climatic conditions, chiefly to the mountain ranges and 
high plateaus; its area was approximately 245,000 square miles. 

Alaska, with a total area exceeding 590,000 square miles, had and still 
has a forest area the extent of which is imperfectly known, but which 
approximates 190,000 square miles. High mountain ranges, rising almost 
from the sea, separate the interior forests from those along the Pacific Coast. 
The latter form a long fringe of heavy and valuable timber, close to deep 
water, on the many islands and the mainland. A relatively mild climate 
and abundant precipitation here make possible a northward extension 
of the dense timber growth found along the coast of Oregon, Washington, 
and British Columbia. The coastal forests of Alaska cover 32,000 square 
miles. Those of the interior grow under far more unfavorable climatic 
conditions, with subarctic temperatures and scant precipitation; they are 
therefore of an entirely different character. Their area has been va- 
riously estimated at from 125,000 to more than 230,000 square miles, but 
their importance as a source of timber supply for other than local purposes 
is at present nil, and so far as can now be foreseen, will always be insig- 
nificant. For local use they will have very high value. 

When settlement of the Atlantic Coast of North America began, the 
colonists from overseas were everywhere confronted with a deep and 
formidable forest that stretched from the water's edge, practically with- 
out a break, far into the remote and unknown interior. In the north, 
and again in the south, conifers predominated. Chief in importance 
among the northern conifers, or " softwoods, " were white pine, spruce, 
and balsam fir; among the southern, several species of yellow pine, the 
woods of which are so similar that in commercial usage all are commonly 
classed together as "southern pine" or "southern yellow pine." Along 



FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 5 

the mountain ranges of the Appalachian system the northern conifers 
thrust far into the south, though confined to increasing altitudes as 
climatic and soil conditions enabled the broad-leafed species, or "hard- 
woods," to press them higher up the mountains. On the other hand, 
along the Atlantic Coast the southern pines made a counter advance as 
far north as to the Delaware capes. 

West of the Appalachians, from the white pine forests of the Great Lakes 
region to the southern pine forests that swept in a broad border along the 
coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the hardwoods held possession of a great area. 
Its westward limit was the prairies, which it skirted as far south as the 
Rio Grande. Eastward the same hardwood forest continued through the 
partial barrier of the mountains, where the northern softwoods held the 
higher elevations, and out toward the Atlantic coastal plain. 

On a broad intermediate belt between the hardwood and the southern 
pine forest, pines and hardwoods contended for possession in a mixed 
forest. The southern pine forest proper occupied most of the coastal 
plain from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to the Trinity River, in what is 
now east Texas. The mixed forest, broadly speaking, paralleled it, run- 
ning from tidewater on and above the Chesapeake southwestward and 
then, north of the Gulf of Mexico, westward. Similarly, hardwoods and 
the northern softwoods contested possession with each other through much 
of the Great Lakes region, and eastward from the Lakes to the ocean. 

Thus the forests of the eastern United States afforded vast supplies of 
both softwoods and hardwoods. Softwood forests are, the world over, 
the main reliance for lumber for structural and general purposes. The 
hardwoods, on the other hand, furnish many woods of peculiar adapta- 
bility for special purposes. The hardwood forests of the United States 
are almost unique among temperate hardwoods in their richness in species 
that produce material of high utility along varied lines. The softwood 
and the hardwood forests of the country have both been indispensable to 
its industrial development. 

In the East the total forest area of more than i ,000,000 square miles 
was made up of something like 400,000 square miles of softwood forest, 
500,000 square miles of hardwood forest, and 150,000 square miles of 
mixed softwoods and hardwoods. The northern softwood forests in- 
cluded two subdivisions. Spruce and fir were the chief species in one of 
them; in the other, three species of pine, of which white pine was by far 
the most important. The spruce-fir forest covered perhaps 65,000 square 
miles in the northernmost part of what is now the eastern United States 
and on the upper slopes of the mountains well down the Appalachians. 
The northern pine forest occupied a large area in the Great Lakes region 
and smaller areas throughout most of the Northeast. It is estimated to 
have covered not less than 110,000 square miles. But the softwood for- 
ests of the South covered 225,000 square miles. Of the mixed softwood 
and hardwood forests approximately 80,000 square miles was northern 
and 70,000 southern. 



6 FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 

The forests of the western United States, in striking contrast with those 
of the East, contain almost no hardwoods. They are also very much 
more exposed to destruction or damage by fire. From the standpoint 
of area the forest east of the Cascade and Sierra ranges, in which western 
yellow pine and Douglas fir are the overwhelmingly predominant species, 
hold first place; but in volume of timber they are surpassed by the giant 
forests of the North Pacific Coast. Heavy coniferous forests cover the 
western slopes of the Sierras. Except in the far north the forests of the 
Rocky Mountain region are less heavy, with spruce, fir, and lodgepole 
pine at high elevations, Douglas fir and yellow pine lower down, and in the 
south a large amount of pinon-juniper forest at still lower elevations. 
This pinon-juniper forest also occurs extensively in the Great Basin. The 
original area of the Rocky Mountain forests, and also the present, may be 
put at 120,000 square miles (exclusive of brush and chaparral). That of 
the Pacific Coast States forests was 125,000 square miles. The forests 
of the Northern Rocky Mountain region covered 60,000 square miles; 
of the central Rocky Mountain region, 30,000 square miles; of the great 
yellow pine region, still farther to the south, 30,000 square miles. 

THE ERA OF DESTRUCTION. 

The first task of the original colonists in seeking to secure a permanent 
foothold on the western continent was necessarily to push back the 
forest, in order to make room for themselves. They had to clear land in 
order to grow food. At the same time they began to make use of the 
vast reservoir of virgin timber which the ages had made ready for them. 
Not only did it furnish them with housing and fuel; it provided abun- 
dantly an easily workable material from which they could fashion all 
kinds of articles which they needed in their daily life, and it gave them 
at once something to export in return for what they drew from the Old 
World. Thus began the drain on the forest which from the most insig- 
nificant beginnings in the early sixteenth century was to expand for four 
hundred years, while the era of destruction ran its unchecked course. 

The pioneer naturally gives little thought to conserving the natural 
resources of a region in which his urgent problem is to make a living, 
conquer the wilderness, and get ahead. His first need is for capital, or 
equipment; and labor is almost equally at a premium. Land and what- 
ever the land furnishes are by comparison of very small account. Lavish 
use of forest resources was therefore bound to take place in a long period 
of exploitation. 

Yet the early colonists were not without apprehension of a possible 
danger from forest destruction. They needed wood close at hand. It 
was not until after, steam power became available in transportation that 
wood could be carried far by land without becoming very costly. 
The colonists lacked even wagon roads. Some of the settlements began 



FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 7 

to face the prospect of a local timber shortage within a few years of their 
founding. 

It was the same situation which European towns had faced much 
earlier, and out of which had come the practice of forestry. In an age 
when wood was the only fuel in use it was a fundamental necessity of 
life to have a source of supply not far away, unless water transportation 
was practicable. Doubtless the solicitude evidenced by the restrictive 
measures which the colonists presently began to adopt was partly due to 
their background of Old- World ideas. Other restrictions were imposed 
on them by the mother country, with a view to monoplizing their trade 
and insuring to England ample supplies of naval stores, ship timbers, and 
masts. Thus early colonial history reveals a certain amount of attempted 
regulation of use of the forest, due to three distinct causes — actual dimi- 
nution of the quantity of timber close enough to some of the settlements 
to meet their local requirements readily, Old- World conceptions which the 
settlers brought with them, and restrictions imposed on them in the 
interests of the countries from which they came. 

But the economic development of America could not be confined 
within the straight- jacket of artificial constraints. It took its own course 
along the lines made inevitable by the new environment. The forest 
resource on the fringe of which the colonists were establishing themselves 
was too vast to afford any real ground for restrictive measures. On the 
contrary, the task of the colonists was to fight the forest which hemmed 
them in, which sheltered wild beasts and wild men, which fought back 
at them for possession of their clearings, which was so huge as to make 
their assaults upon it seem puny and of negligible consequence. The 
threat of local shortages of timber was overcome by drawing on more 
distant supplies. Small sawmills multiplied, and as they cut out the 
cream of what grew close about them many moved to new sites. Their 
product was rafted down the streams or loaded on ships, and commerce 
in lumber increased. The monopolistic regulations imposed by the 
European colonial system were very galling, but were ineffective in the 
long run to prevent either the cutting of specified classes of trees or the 
expansion of trade along its natural lines. Forest exploitation provided 
the colonists with an ever augmenting stream of capital — their greatest 
need — at the same time that the steady warfare of civilized man against 
the forest conquered for him new outposts and a widening domain. 

Hostility to the forest became ingrained in the American spirit. To 
free the soil from its mastery was to serve the cause of progress, to create 
wealth, to help build an empire. Something of this spirit still survives 
in the newer regions, wherever agricultural expansion is taking place 
through the clearing of land now timbered. Within limits it was not 
merely natural and inevitable but justifiable. Only by forest destruc- 
tion on a vast scale could transformation of the empty wilderness into 
the great commonwealths that occupy all the eastern part of the country, 



8 FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 

from the prairies to the ocean and from the Gulf to the Great Lakes, ever 
have taken place. But the zeal for ridding the land of forest growth to 
make room for agriculture has overshot its mark. A very large aggre- 
gate of cut-over land, some of which was farmed for a time, some of 
which has never been brought under the plow, is now nonproductive. 
That the community does not benefit, but suffers, when forests are de- 
stroyed and agriculture is introduced on land that it can not permanently 
hold is unfortunately too little realized. Such a course is either an 
economic and social blunder or a social crime. The history of land utili- 
zation in the United States affords abundant examples of both; and the 
chapter containing them is still unclosed. 

RISE AND COURSE OF THE LUMBER INDUSTRY. 

The first lumber of the settlers was rived or hewn from the log or 
sawed by hand. Within a very few years, however, water-driven or 
wind-driven sawmills were set up. The white pine of the Northeast was 
from the outset the main attraction; its lumber held far and away the 
leading place in quantity produced, down to the latter part of the nine- 
teenth century. The qualities of the wood were such as to give it pre- 
eminence among the eastern softwoods for building and general uses. 
At the same time even the earliest of the colonists began to utilize for 
specialty purposes the hardwood growth — chiefly oak, which furnished 
ship timbers and staves. Pipe staves quickly became an important 
article of export. 

Besides wood in several forms, the forest soon began to furnish for 
export naval stores, obtained from the resinous pines that grew in con- 
siderable abundance even in the northern colonies. The history of the 
naval stores industry in the United States parallels in many respects 
that of the lumber industry. It has, however, hitherto been confined 
wholly to the East and has long had its field exclusively in the southern 
States, where it has been carried on with methods so destructive that it 
is now rapidly declining and must soon sink to relative insignificance 
unless given a further lease of life through forestry. 

All through the colonial period the advance of settlement inland was 
very slow. Generally, it followed the water courses. The lumber in- 
dustry partly accompanied, partly preceded it. When the beginnings 
of a new community opened a clearing in the forest, a sawmill was as 
much a necessity as a gristmill. Sometimes the two were combined. 
On the other hand, the requirements of the growing older towns and the 
export trade created a market for lumber that caused supplies to be 
sought in the unbroken wilderness. Thus was developed the craft of 
the woodsman-lumberman. Its shifting camps and mills pressed farther 
and farther inland, while the spring freshets floated down the rivers its 
rafted product. In the rear of its operations the settlers gradually cleaned 
up the pine that was left, and laboriously destroyed the hardwoods 



FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 9 

which had no value to them but were merely an incumbrance, to make 
room for their farms. So, toilsomely and painfully, the conquest of the 
wilderness proceeded. 

Down to almost the middle of the nineteenth century the American 
lumber industry continued to be an industry of small and dispersed 
establishments, for the most part cutting merely to supply local needs, 
dependent on water for its motive power, with its technical processes 
still relatively primitive, and unable to distribute its product widely 
except as water transportation was available. Along the fall line, 
especially in northern New England, there developed some concentration 
of the industry, with larger establishments to which logs were brought 
downstream by "driving," and which supplied a broadening general 
market; yet Maine was the only State in which the cut much exceeded 
the consumption. Steam power began to be introduced as early as the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, but its use made little headway 
except where water power was not available and tended toward dis- 
persal rather than concentration of production. The Erie Canal, opened 
in 1825, created an artery of commerce for the eastward movement of 
pine from western New York, and then from the Lake States, whose vast 
virgin supplies were also beginning to be tapped to meet the needs of 
the territory southward; but the population of the country was still 
relatively small and sparse, and the per capita consumption of lumber 
low in comparison with what it was shortly to become. After more 
than two hundred years of growth, the industry which had been born 
almost at the first landing of the colonists on the Atlantic Coast was 
still a stripling. It was swiftly to be transformed into a giant. 

In 1840 the population of the United States was 17,000,000, and its 
per capita consumption of lumber is estimated to have been approxi- 
mately 85 board feet.^ The period of rapid railway building and the 
profound changes in the economic and industrial life of the nation which 
it produced were about to begin. Settlement of the prairie States and 
the increased lumber consumption in the older regions due to higher 
standards of living and expanding industries, were to swell enormously 
the drain on the forests and bring in new methods of production. The 
Lake States pineries provided a virgin stand exceptional in accessibility, 
quality, and volume. It was there that the American lumber industry 
was to find its great opportunity for transformation from a widely dis- 
persed industry of small operations, slowly eating its way back along 
the water courses to the depths of the eastern forests, into a powerful 
engine of attack. 

2 A board foot of lumber is 12 inches square and i inch thick; 12 board feet are therefore the equivalent 
ol 1 cubic foot of lumber. In the United States it is customary to express the contents of logs and the 
stand of timber in the woods in terms of board feet; in that case the numerals mean the quantity of lum- 
ber which it is estimated can be manufactured, imder the prevailing standards of utilization, from the 
given raw material. Since the amount of waste in manufacture varies with different sizes and classes of 
timber, and since the standard of utilization is not uniform, no single converting factor can be used to 
obtain the equivalent in cubic feet of board feet, log measure. For general purposes, however, eight board 
feet may be considered the equivalent of one cubic foot. 



lO FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 

At the mid century the population of the country had become 23,000,- 
000, and the per capita consumption of lumber 230 board feet. Yet 
New England, New York, and Pennsylvania still constituted the main pro- 
ducing region, with a cut that was over half that of the entire country; 
the average mill sawing and planing lumber still had an output valued 
at less than $3,300; and although nearly 10,000 miles of railway had been 
built, lumber transportation and distribution had been little affected. 
Twenty years later the trend qi the times had become clearly evident. 
Michigan was the State of largest lumber production, and the average 
production per mill for the entire country had a value of over $8,000. 
The railroad mileage of the country was more than five times as great 
as in 1850, while the capital invested in the lumber industry had risen , 
from $40,000,000 to over $140,000,000, and the value of the product had > 
increased from less than $60,000,000 to more than $2 10,000,000. Expan- 
sion of production continued until 1906. In that peak year the cut was 
46 billion board feet, the average production per mill had a value of over 
$14,000, the capital invested in the lumber industry was over $1,000,000,- 
000, and the total value of all forest products also exceeded that amount. 

Sixty years, therefore, cover what may be called the heyday of exploi- 
tation. In this relatively short period leadership in production passed ■ 
successively from the Northeast to the Lake States and the South; ' 
while from 1905 onward the individual State with the largest output 
was Washington. At the present time southern pine still remains the 
species furnishing the largest cut, but the three Pacific States produce 
almost as much lumber, wholly softwood, as the total of both softwoods 
and hardwoods in the eight States of the southern group. Within less 
than the space of a single lifetime the center of production has shifted 
from the Atlantic States to one great forest region after another, and 
is now passing to the last region of all, on the opposite margin of the 
continent. 

The lumber cut of the country in the entire colonial period could not 
have begun to approach that of any individual year in the twentieth 
century. It was not in the days of stage-coach and frame-house towns, 
but in those of the locomotive and the sky-scraper that both total and 
per capita consumption reached its maximum. Since 1906, however, 
the trend of lumber production has been downward. In 1920 it repre- 
sented a per capita consumption of 316 board feet, as against 500 board 
feet in 1907 — a decrease of 37 per cent in 13 years. The reason is not 
that the age of steel is making wood less wanted, but that the cost of 
lumber is increasing. Enforced economies have reduced per capita 
consumption to about what it was in 1866. The cost at the mill of 
each citizen's share of the lumber produced in 1920 was three times that 
in 1890, but its amount was one-sixth less. The lumber industry grew 
to mighty proportions when the requirements of an advancing and 
expanding Nation called upon it for rapid exploitation of the vast supplies 
of virgin timber that stood ready for use. As a purely exploitative 



m 



FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. I I 

agency for the service of the pubhc needs, it has nearly run its course. 
The dechning consumption of lumber in recent years is a symptom that 
a new era is in sight, in which requirements must be adjusted to supplies 
obtained through the growing of timber. 

While the lumber industry has been essentially migratory in its main 
course, with a shifting of the center of production from one great forest 
region to another, operations have continued in the older regions. This 
has tended to give a delusive effect of permanence. For a long time 
timber was so abundant that only the best was taken. Subsequently 
further utilization took place of what had been left behind. The North- 
east, for example, has never ceased to be the scene of lumbering opera- 
tions, and its forests have been gone over again and again. It paid to 
return for trees of smaller sizes and for kinds of trees at first held in 
disesteem. As the virgin white pine vanished from the stand, attention 
was turned to spruce in northern New England, and hemlock in Pennsyl- 
vania, as sources of supply of softwood lumber; and in course of time 
much second-growth reached merchantable size. But this continuance 
of the industry in the older regions is merely carrying depletion further; 
the production of wood through growth does not balance the rate of use. 
Though the bulk of the country's lumber cut comes from the diminishing 
virgin forests, that which comes from the second growth exceeds the rate 
of replacement of this material. In addition, the second-growth forests 
are being dfained in other ways than through cutting for conversion into 
lumber. It is estimated that the second growth under saw timber 
size is being used up three and one-half times as fast as it grows, while 
the second-growth saw timber is being cut one and one-half times as fast 
as it grows. 

In short, to support a permanent lumber industry, there must be a 
large forest capital in the form of growing stock, which must not undergo 
diminution if an even output is to be maintained. It is the progressive 
decline in the quantity of growing stock that carries the most serious 
threat to the future of the lumber industry. The cause of this decline is 
partly the cutting of timber without precautions to insure the establish- 
ment of a new crop of valuable trees; but by far the most serious cause is 
the damage done young growth by forest fires. 

FOREST FIRES AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES. 

Forest fires have been the chief agency in forest destruction and are 
the chief cause of forest depletion. Fire was the most effective tool of 
the settler for clearing land. It was also the inevitable aftermath of 
lumbering. As population increased in the forest regions, the number 
of fires increased. ■ So long as timber was abundant these fires were 
lightly regarded or even held beneficial. Public opinion inclined to the 
belief that in any case they were unpreventable; and until comparatively 
recent years no organized agency for combating them had been created. 
They have, therefore, for the most part had free rein. Even now a large 



12 FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 

part of the country lacks the most elementary provision for preventing 
and controlling forest fires, and adequate protection is given only a 
minor fraction of the total forest area. 

Fires have destroyed an enormous total of merchantable timber, and 
have perhaps equaled if not exceeded in their toll taken from the virgin 
forests all that the lumbermen have cut for manufacture. There have 
been many great conflagrations that have destroyed everything in their 
path, with great losses not only of timber but also of other forms of 
property and of human life. But even more serious in the aggregate 
has been the damage done by the repeated burning of cut-over lands 
and by fires of minor proportions. After lumbering as customarily prac- 
ticed, large amounts of inflammable material are left on the ground. 
When fire gets into this, as it usually does, the unmerchantable and young 
growth left by the logger is greatly diminished, if not wholly destroyed. 
Trees which the first fire kills without consuming furnish fuel in their 
turn for a later fire; and so the process goes on until the land is perhaps 
reduced to an unproductive waste, with even the soil robbed of all 
organic material or burned entirely away from the bare rocks. 

Had it been possible to keep fires out of the woods, natural restocking 
would generally have replaced the timber by a new stand of reasonably 
satisfactory character, both in quality and amount. This would have 
been particularly true on the lands lumbered a generation or more ago 
before utilization became intensive. The lack of growing stock suffi- 
ciently advanced toward maturity to make good saw timber within the 
next forty or fifty years is the most serious element in the forest situation 
with which the United States is now faced. 

In the forests of the West the danger of fires is far greater than in 
those of the East. A prolonged dry season each summer is the rule in 
these softwood forests. Their character makes them highly susceptible 
to damage, while their mountainous topography makes them hard to 
protect. Contending as they do with natural conditions generally far 
less favorable to tree growth than those found in the Eastern forest 
regions, they are much more easily destroyed. With increase of popu- 
lation and industrial activities, the fire hazard to which they are exposed 
tends to become greater and greater. Efficient protection of the forests 
of the West is absolutely necessary if they are not to be wiped out. 
Indeed, it is doubtful if the very best system of organized protection 
that can be maintained without a prohibitive cost can preserve them 
without the help of an enlightened and vigorous public sentiment that 
will make people careful not to cause fires. Fortunately, such a senti- 
ment is developing. Had the opening up of the West gone on at the 
same time with that of the East, and had the attitude of the public toward 
the forest been the same, the original timber resources of the region 
would not be even a memory now. 

Forest fires in the United States annually burn over an average of 
close to 17,000 square miles. Most of these fires run along the ground, 



FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 1 3 

fed by the surface litter or dry grass, and doing relatively little damage 
to the large trees, but killing mainly the seedlings and other young 
growth. Repeated fires of this kind result in a forest with an abnormal 
proportion of old trees, yet of decreasing density and quality. In ex- 
treme cases the forest may eventually be converted into worthless brush 
land or barren. 

Primarily in consequence of forest fires much of the forest area of the 
United States has become partially or wholly unproductive. It is esti- 
mated that of the total area of approximately 723,000 square miles, 
more than 126,000 square miles must be classed as idle waste, while 
about 383,000 square miles is culled or cut-over land, of which only lim- 
ited areas are fully restocking. The remaining virgin forest area of the 
country is about 214,000 square miles. 

THE FORESTRY MOVEMENT. 

Fears of a possible timber shortage and advocacy of limitations on the 
use of forests, and of the protection of forests against fire, have not been 
wanting in the United States from almost the first years of settlement of 
its eastern coast. The history not merely of agitation but of legislation 
reaches back into the early colonial period. In the latter part of the 
eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century sporadic examples 
of sentiment in favor of action to insure future supplies of timber cropped 
out. Between 1799 and 1831 several laws were enacted by Congress 
with a view to insuring supplies of live oak. But it was not until the 
latter half of the century that the movement for forestry in the United 
States can be said really to have started. It followed close on the 
revolutionary changes in the lumber industry that began to take place 
around 1850, and undoubtedly owed its origin to the accelerated rate of 
forest destruction that came as the Lake States pineries developed into 
an important field of operation. 

In the late sixties official inquiries were inaugurated by several States, 
looking to the formulation of some course of action to protect their forest 
resources. Interest in timber culture through tree planting began to be 
manifest about the same time. To stimulate tree planting in the prairie 
country "Arbor day" was inaugurated in 1872. The next year the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science made provision 
for submitting a memorial to Congress and the several State legislatures 
on the need for forest preservation and for recommending legislation. 
This eventually led to the inauguration of work in forestry by the Federal 
Government in 1876, when a special agent was appointed in the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture to collect information. 

Slowly the movement gathered headway, receiving more and more 
support in pubhc sentiment. In 1881 a Division of Forestry was created 
in the Federal Department of Agriculture, and gradually expanded its 
investigations. In 1891 Congress authorized the President to create 
forest reserves from the timberlands of the public domain. This author- 
ity was sparingly used until 1897, when President Cleveland just before 



14 FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 

the close of his term of office proclaimed more than twenty million acres 
of new reserves. 

This action was epoch making. It really inaugurated the policy of 
public ownership and operation of what are now known as "National 
Forests." Up to that time the forests on the public domain seemed in 
a fair way to be destroyed eventually by fire and reckless cutting. Noth- 
ing was being done to protect them, or even to use them in the right way. 
They were simply left to bum, or else to pass by means of one or another 
of the land laws into the hands of private owners whose interest in most 
cases impelled them to take from the land what they could get easily and 
move on to other forested lands. 

Had this destruction gone on unchecked, there would in the end have 
been little timber left in the western United States, either to burn or to 
cut. More than this, the destruction of the forest cover on the water- 
sheds supplying hundreds of streams which rise in the western mountains 
would have had its certain effect on stream flow — low water or no water 
at all during the long dry periods, and destructive floods after heavy rains. 
This, of course, would have meant disaster to the systems of irrigation by 
which thousands of farmers raise their crops. It would also have ver}^ 
seriously hampered, and in many cases prevented, hydroelectric power 
development. 

A few months after President Cleveland created the new forest reserves. 
Congress enacted a law outlining a system of organization and manage- 
ment for these public forests and placing their administration under the 
Secretary of the Interior. 

Government administration of the reserves soon made apparent the 
necessity for scientific forestry to make their use general. It was the 
duty of the Secretary of the Interior to prescribe regulations which 
would insure the fulfillment of the objects aimed at in creating the 
reserves. Timber cutting must not destroy the forests, but must provide 
for the growing of a new timber crop. Grazing had grossly abused the 
range; it was necessary to devise methods for increasing the forage crop. 
Both timber use and grazing use must be so managed that water supplies 
would be maintained and bettered. All the resources of the forests 
needed to be given careful consideration and plans devised for their best 
development. Without such plans little of the value of the forests to 
the public could be secured. Technical problems were involved which 
the officials of the Interior Department felt to be outside their province. 
They therefore at first requested the aid of the experts of the Department 
of Agriculture as advisers, and soon recommended the transfer of adminis- 
tration of the reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. 

This transfer took place in 1905, and the forests were placed in charge 
of the Bureau of Forestry, into which the old Division of Forestry had by 
this time expanded. At the same time the name of the bureau was 
hanged to "Forest Service." 



FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 1 5 

To-day the forest work of the American Government is mainly centered 
in the Forest Service, which, in addition to administering and protecting 
the National Forests, studies a great number of general forest problems 
and diffuses information regarding forestry. The Government does other 
forest work, however, besides that of the Forest Service. The Department 
of the Interior, through its Ofhce of Indian Affairs and its National Park 
Service, administers the forests on Indian reservations and the national 
parks. The Ofhce of Forest Pathology of the Bureau of Plant Industry, 
in the Department of Agriculture, studies the diseases of trees, and the 
branch of forest insect investigations in the Bureau of Entomology of the 
same department seeks means for controlling the insect enemies of the 
forests. 

Long before the creation of National Forests began, virtually all the 
unreserved public lands in the States east of the Mississippi River had 
been taken up. Under the provisions of an act of March i, 191 1 (the 
so-called Weeks law), Congress inaugurated the purchase of mountain 
lands from private owners in the Appalachian and White Mountain 
regions of the East. Since this law was passed more than 2,000,000 
acres of spruce and hardwood forest in the Eastern States have been ac- 
quired or approved for purchase, out of a total of more than 50,000,000 
acres of this class of timberland upon which the eastern industries have 
been dependent for their supply. The National Forest Reservation 
Commission, established by the act of March i, 191 1, and consisting of the 
Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agricul- 
ture, two Members of the Senate, and two Members of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, authorizes the purchase of all lands acquired under this act. 
As the Government obtains title to these lands, the Forests are put under 
systematic forest management with the object of improving their regulative 
effect upon stream flow and of increasing the supply of forest products. 

The timber alone on the eastern National Forests has a present value 
greater than the entire cost to the Government of acquiring these lands, 
with their timber; and the revenue derived from these Forests has been 
rapidly increasing until, in 1920, they had become practically self- 
supporting. Yet the sales of timber have hitherto been salvaging opera- 
tions or improvement cuttings rather than actual harvesting of what the 
Forests annually grow, for the lands had been depleted by lumbering and 
fires while they were in private ownership. Under the practice of for- 
estry the stands of timber are increasing, at the same time that the 
protective value of the cover as a regulator of stream flow is materially 
improved. From an industrial standpoint, these eastern National 
Forests will play an important part as permanent sources of supply of 
material, particularly hardwoods for local wood-using industries, and 
will appreciably lessen the acuteness of the timber shortage in the East 
as the supplies of virgin timber approach exhaustion and before the gen- 
eral practice of forestry on private lands has been under way long enough 
to supply timber of commercial size. 



1 6 FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 

Establishment of the National Forest system on an enduring basis 
was the chief task in forestry during the first fifteen years of the twentieth 
century. It involved not only the constructive development of a sound 
policy of administration but also the building up of an adequate organi- 
zation and the winning of an approving public sentiment for what was to 
the people of the United States a novel and exceedingly dubious experi- 
ment in government. President Roosevelt gave the National Forest 
policy his most vigorous support, and included in the Forests most of the 
remaining public timberlands; during his administration the total area 
of the Forests was more than quadrupled. He also ardently championed 
conservation of the forest resources of the country generally, and greatly 
advanced the forestry movement. 

Along with the building up of the National Forests and National 
Forest administration, there was being developed through research an 
increasing body of knowledge relating to forestry. In 1910 the Forest 
Products Laboratory was established at Madison, Wis., in cooperation 
with the University of Wisconsin. This research institution has conducted 
a great number of studies by which knowledge of matters relating to 
forest products has been advanced along many lines. Forest experiment 
stations are also being developed. 

Within very recent years the forward movement in- forestry has been 
evidenced by a widespread interest in the questions of the further meas- 
ures necessary to bring about the management of the private forest lands 
of the country in accordance with the principles of forestry. There has 
also been large progress in State forestry. Thirty-two of the states 
now have some organized provision for work in forestry, while 20 have 
State forests, with an aggregate area of over 9,000 square miles. The 
Federal Government cooperates with 26 States for the protection of 
forests on the watersheds of navigable streams against fire, and is now 
appropriating $400,000 annually for this purpose, while the State appro- 
priations for cooperative forest protection are nearly $2,000,000. About 
259,000 square miles of forest land are now afiforded protection in varying 
degree under the organized systems maintained by the States. The 
National Forests, protected by the Forest Service, have practically the 
same total area. Nevertheless, 40 per cent of the forest area of the coun- 
try has no organized protection and 20 per cent has only nominal protec- 
tion. With the great amount of forest land which is either restocking 
only partially or not restocking at all, and with the area of idle or largely 
idle land increasing at the rate of some 6,000 square miles yearly, the stop- 
ping of forest fires is the most urgent first requisite for increasing the 
future timber supply of the country. 

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